Locks
1 Windsor Terrace, Portobello, Dublin 8. Tel: 01 4543391 http://www.locksrestaurant.ie/
12-3 and 6-11 Monday-Saturday

A couple of years ago when L’Gueleton opened Dublin suddenly realised what we had been missing – quality French bistro food at inexpensive prices and an informal atmosphere. Their enormous success led to many more French style bistros opening and many are serving excellent food, but for the best bistro food in the city there is only one place to go – Locks. And who is running Locks? Yes, the man who ran l’Gueleton Troy Maguire...

Put simply, based on the night I was there, this is some of the finest tasting food in the country.

Forgive the extended metaphors, but you occasionally hear of a chef “shooting from the hip,” well Maguire is a practiced, perfectionist marksman –Vasili Zaitsev (the famed Russian sniper of Stalingrad) rather than Billy the Kid – every dish we ate was faultless.

Starters range from €7.50 to €16 and we were hard pressed to choose between them. In the end we had three between the two of us. Mackerel with horseradish, smoked eel, apple and fennel salad (€15) was crisply cooked mackerel with all the flavours in the salad working in harmony to lift and dignify the flavours of the fish. The apple and horseradish elements cleaned the palate of any oil while adding accents, the fennel added depth of flavour, and the dressing bound it all together.

Duck liver and foie gras parfait with spiced pear and cornichons (€14.90) had depth of flavour with lightness of touch – everything a parfait should be; and the Fisherman’s Soup (€9.50) had substance and heart warming flavours and even subtlety – difficult to achieve in a tomato based fish soup.

With our starters we drank a lovely bottle of Rueda from Monsalve at €28 - fragrant on the nose, honeyed and citrus fruit on the middle palate, but with crisp acidity on the finish; it coped admirably with the diverse flavours it was up against.

For mains we had “Mullard duck with puy lentils, glazed navet, broadbeans and devils on horseback (€26.50)” which was served perfectly pink and full of flavour (sourced from the Champagne region according to our waitress, and according to Google a Mullard is a cross between a Mallard and a Muscovy duck). The broadbeans and baby carrots were perfect with it while the devils on horseback acted as a foil and the figs added a touch of class.

Dry aged ribeye steak with bearnaise or snail and Roquefort sauce, watercress and chips (€28.90) was perfection. The chips were quite honestly among the finest I have ever tasted and remained crisp and fluffy from first to last. Upon enquiry I was told they are blanched three times before being fried in oil – such perfectionism pays off admirably. The steak was correctly cooked, full of flavour, and the sauces (we ordered béarnaise and snail and mushroom) were almost licked from their ramekins.

For wine with our mains we had a Ribero del Duero from Hijos de Antonio Polo, a steal at €26, medium bodied and juicy – slightly more suited to the duck than the steak.

For dessert we moved to some comfy chairs near the bar and shared an intense “single estate chocolate brownie with kumquat and vanilla ice cream” (€8.50) and a couple of glasses of sweet Gaillac for €9 each. This was probably the richest and most complex and perfect brownie I can remember tasting – a flavour that lingers even now a week later. The chocolate was Valrhona Palmira from Venezuela (they showed us) but I know this chocolate and excellent as it is, the perfection of the brownie came from the chef.

The bill was €189 .80 with no service charge and we floated out on a high caused by much more than the wine.